Martin Luther King, Jr. Died On Maya's Birthday
Prior to Malcolm X's murder, Angelou, a close friend of James Baldwin, had plans to assist him in founding the Organization of Afro-American Unity, a new civil rights organization. Alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., she coordinated events for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Dr. King urged Angelou to tour the nation to support the SCLC in the beginning of 1968, but she postponed it in order to organize her birthday celebration. Dr. King was killed in Memphis on April 4, 1968, the day before she turned 40. She fell into a severe depression after his passing.
The renowned author and civil rights activist remembered that day, when her 40th birthday celebration was tragically cut short, in a CBC interview with George Stroumboulopoulos soon before her passing. In preparation for her birthday party, Angelou said she was preparing dinner in her New York City residence when she received the devastating news from a friend. King had asked her to spend a month with him helping him gather money for his Poor People's March, but she had said it would have to wait until after her birthday celebration.
Maya claimed that for the next 30 years, she continued to honor King on April 4 by sending flowers to Coretta Scott King, the widow of the civil rights activist. “It is a great blessing to have lived in the time of Martin Luther King Jr., when forgiveness and generosity of spirit encouraged our citizenry to work for a better world for everybody”, she wrote of King in her posthumously published memoir, Rainbow in the Cloud.
